1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of optically scanning dot pattern information formed on a printed material and reproducing various kinds of information corresponding to the dot pattern information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, there has been proposed a voice emitting toy for reading a barcode printed on a picture book or a game card using an optical sensor and emitting a particular voice. Such a voice emitting toy enables to read from a memory various kinds of voice information corresponding to a read barcode to reproduce the voice information.
However, such a technique using a barcode requires a dedicated area on paper to be reserved for printing the barcode, and the barcode is only for an information processing system to read, and a code description of the barcode can not be visually understood by a reader of a book including a picture book. Since the barcode is printed on a limited paper space, a reader feels it unpleasant and the barcode sometimes may reduce a product value of a book including a picture book.
Further, since the barcode, as mentioned above, can not be printed over letters, graphics or symbols printed on a paper sheet, when these letters, graphics, symbols and the like are used to reproduce voices, the barcode has to be printed near them, which presents a trouble such that it is difficult for a reader to intuitively know voice information or the like added on the letters or the like.
Regarding this point, a “dot code” technique disclosed in the Japanese Laid-Open patent publication No. 10-261059 proposes a method for scanning code information printed by a dot pattern to reproduce information.
In the related art, data is defined by way for arranging a dot pattern in a block field, and a marker is defined by a dot pattern which is different from the data dot pattern to serve as a synchronization signal. According to this technique, a dot pattern created by printing dots in the two-dimensional direction on a paper sheet in accordance with a predetermined rule is read by a pen type scanner, and the scanning speed and the scanning direction of this scanner is analyzed by an information processing device thereby to reproduce information including a voice which is associated therewith in advance.
However, since such a dot code technique is based on the assumption that dots are dynamically scanned by a scanner, although it can reproduce voice information along letters printed on a paper sheet, it is not adequate to reproduce information only by statically abutting a scanning device to a picture book or the like on which a character and the like are freely arranged and printed. In other words, since this dot code technique requires to carry out more than a predetermined distance of scanning on the x and y coordinates in order to obtain significant code information, it is impossible to associate a minimum area with a dot code and to print the area.